Category Archives: writing

The rules of write #2

I’m not a great fan of talking about characters in terms of ‘her/his truth’. Though it is a concept I understand, my problem with the concept is it is by nature restrictive. Which is to say that the concept states that I, a white upper working class British man in his early fifties, should not write about the experience of an African American soldier born in the early 1900’s in the southern states of the US, because I can not know, or speak for, that characters ‘truth…’ Continue reading

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Words in Darkness

I am fond of the dark, of laying on my bed, naked to the world, staring into the void. I could be staring up at anything. Staring up at endless worlds of possibility. The dance of the infinite. The realm … Continue reading

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Piano Man, A Guest Post by Will Nett

Like most authors, I’ll do almost anything to avoid writing. Buying a piano a couple of years ago seemed as good an idea as any. I’d always fancied having a crack at it, but would not have gone out of my way to find one, so when a friend was selling one, and another had a van in which to deliver it, I was first in line. Continue reading

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The rules of writing… #1

This is a bit of a rant I know. This is also just my opinion, yours might differ… But if you think any writer should only write that which they personally experience due to their gender, sexuality and skin colour, then yours is an opinion I don’t give much of a damn about, because I believe you are fundamentally wrong Continue reading

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A special kind of purgatory…

I bought a copy of Barbara Avon’s novella Owl Eyes Motel in a fit of rage spite and with an urge to dress the balance of the universe a little because cretinous arseholes leaving shitty one-star reviews for another human being’s labours of love offends me… Continue reading

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NaNoWriMo: Or how to first draft 2022 edition

With the 1st of November a week away here is my usual mildly self-aggrandising of attempting to offer some advice to budding writers, or as it is otherwise known the story of how I wrote my first novel. It is also the story of how I wrote my nineteenth novel. Continue reading

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The Guest Runes…

Somehow I have ended up hosting a discussion panel on Runes, there relevance to dark age culture, what the Victorians did with them and the difference between New Age pseudo-mythology and actual historical facts and ancient cultures… This is fascinating stuff. Continue reading

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The Complete Misadventures of Hannibal Smyth

No one who ever dreamed of being a writer dreamed of the day their book was available on Kindle..
When you have the writers dream, you dream of writing and then holding your work in hardback, and any writer who tells you different is a liar. Continue reading

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Is Steampunk Elitist? A guest Post by Mat McCall

“Why do Steampunks always dress up as wealthy Neo-Victorians? What about the workers and the poor, why don’t Steamers dress up like them?” Continue reading

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A bit of genealogy and the Dutch

I don’t know what my paternal Granddad did for a living. I’ve never known. It never occurred to me to ask my dad what his dad did for a crust. Genealogy has never really been much of a thing for … Continue reading

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